Diving Part 3 - Fun Diving, Koh Tao

Fun Dive time! It was the day of the trip to Sail Rock. My confidence had built quite a bit on the Advanced Course. I was still cautious but I didn't see that as a bad thing being 20-30ft under water.

It was an early start, we had to be ready to leave the dive resort at 8. We had got up about 6 (not having a job to get up for is making mornings so much harder 😂) I was too tired to even think about being nervous. We headed out, the boat was much quieter than other dives, and were given our dive brief on the way. We had a different Dive Master today but he was just as nice as our instructor, really laid back, appreciated I was apprehensive, and completely put my mind at ease.

Because the site was quite a distance away, both dives would be completed here on the same site. Fine by us, we were looking forward to it.

We were diving as a group of 4 plus our DM. The other 2 were solo travellers. Both lads. One English and one German.

I remembered everything I needed to remember and once we had completed all of our buddy checks I felt 100% more confident when it was noticed how prepared and organised we were.

We descended and were off. Until we weren't. I couldn't descend. I was battling to drop into the water but I just kept floating towards the surface. I was concentrating on my breathing, I'd completely deflated my BCD, I was properly weighted (same as the previous dives) I just wasn't sinking. I was so confused and the hubby just thought it was funny. Our DM dropped an extra weight in the pocket of my BCD while holding me at his depth then waited for me to descend again. Eventually we were off. I was praying that wasn't a sign of things to come!

The marine life here was incredible. We dove directly through a school of chevron barracuda that completely surrounded us. Everywhere you looked they were there.

We arrived at a structure called 'The chimney'. During the brief, the description of this had made a nervous and I didn't think I would do it. But before I even realised what it was I was half way through. The chimney was basically a vertical tunnel. You started at the bottom and swam upwards towards the light that shone from the surface. It was wide enough for 1 person but not too narrow. I'd been worried about getting snagged on something on the way through but it was actually really simple and an amazing view.

The hubby took all of it in his stride, as always. Taking snaps on his go-pro and practically diving alone. He didn't bat an eyelid, even if things went wrong. On one occasion he couldn't descend, his face was a picture through his goggles, just arms out to the sides of him and wide open eyes as though he was saying 'oh well' 🤷🏻‍♂️ . Sometimes he would disappear out of sight, not ideal for my nerves, but he would always reappear at some point as though he had always been there, give me the ok, then explain later he had just seen something interesting and wanted to take a look.

Unfortunately we didn't get to see any Whale Sharks. The sightings had stopped about 10 days, maybe 2 weeks earlier. I was gutted for the hubby, but he wasn't really that fussed. He was just so please he had spent so much time under water and now had a dive qualification. He was already talking about all the other places he wanted to dive on the rest of our trip.... oh.... I've got to do this again.??

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